Class Act: Dallas senior writes math book to help others

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DALLAS — Being a math genius is one thing, but passing that genius on to others is much bigger, and that's what makes Yash Chandak our Class Act of the Week.

Yash is a senior at the Science and Engineering Magnet School in Dallas, and a top competitor in Number Sense, an advanced, fast-paced mathematics competition.

“It’s entirely mental mathematics, that means you cannot write on any scratch paper,” explained Chandak. “You can’t do any marginal calculations or anything, you just get a question and you write an answer.”

But he found that there were very few resources when it came to planning for the contest, so he literally wrote the book on it!

“Over the summer between 11th and 12 grade, I sat down and I looked at lot of tests that I’ve taken, a lot of tests that I’ve yet to take, and I went question by question. And I went to see what trick is used in each one and whether I know how to do it,” Yash said. “And I made a list of all the tricks I feel like are essential for a competitor in any grade to know, to be successful in this competition.”

And for all those hours of hard work and writing, he’s asking nothing in return, giving the book away for free online.

“I want this book to be helpful to more than just the people around me, I want it to be helpful to anyone that wants to pursue mental mathematics, anyone that wants to pursue number sense,” he said. “And the best way to do that, the best way to share this knowledge that I’ve acquired, is by putting it on a place you can just download for free.”

Yeah, he’s the best teammate and opponent you could ask for. And he’s already leading the way for the next generation of math whizzes!